Benchmarking is an essential step in making quantitative improvements to the user experience of a website, app, or product. In an earlier article and course, I discussed the benefits of regularly benchmarking and it's the topic of my forthcoming book. While technology platforms like MUIQ have made unmoderated benchmarks popular, moderated benchmarks are still essential for benchmarking physical products, and desktop and enterprise software. It

UX benchmarking is an effective method for understanding how people use and think about an interface, whether it’s for a website, software, or mobile app. Benchmarking becomes an essential part of a plan to systematically improve the user experience. A lot is involved in conducting an effective benchmark. I’m covering many of the details in a 4-week course sponsored by the UXPA this October 2017.

Most of the millions of hotel bookings made each year are done online. Despite the proliferation of hotel aggregator websites like Expedia and Trivago, most people book directly on the hotel websites. With such a high concentration of travelers booking directly on hotel websites, having a good user experience is a differentiator. If travelers can’t find needed information about a hotel or room, can’t make

When I started systematically measuring website usability over 10 years ago I started with the SUS as a key metric. The System Usability Scale (SUS) was the natural questionnaire to start with. It was then, as it is now, a popular 10-item questionnaire to measure the perceived usability of interfaces. It’s been around for over 30 years and because of the wording of the items

Positive word of mouth is a critical driver of future growth for consumer software products. Along with features and capabilities, user experience is a key determinant of how likely users adopt new technology and recommend software. We’ve found that usability accounts for between 30% and 60% of the variation in Net Promoter Scores. A positive experience leads customers to recommend a product. A negative experience,

Despite the attention consumer-based mobile apps, websites, and software get, a lot of the world depends on business software. Business software supports core functions for organizations such as productivity tasks, communication, accounting, and sales. Along with features and capabilities, the user experience of software is a key determinant of how likely users adopt new technology and recommend the product. Benchmarking is an essential step in

An increasing amount of shopping is done online. Almost $100 billion worth of products were sold online during the two-month Christmas buying season of 2016. It’s become especially easy for consumers to find the lowest price on a product. If consumers can’t find needed information, purchase a product easily, or don’t trust the brand or information on a website, they go elsewhere and may tell

Content is king. Whether it’s for books, movies, audio books, news sites, or entertainment websites. When you have good content people will come and stay. But if people can’t find the content or there’s too much friction in the experience you’ll likely lose your audience even with killer content. An increasing number of consumers now subscribe to a premium content service like Netflix, Hulu, or

Benchmarking is an essential step to understanding how design changes actually improve the user experience. A reliable benchmark helps you differentiate real improvements from random noise. A lot goes into a benchmarking study, and any of those things can go wrong. It's important to get the details right because you'll use the benchmarks to make comparisons over time and the wrong decisions can have an

[caption id="attachment_2973" align="alignnone" width="237"] UX Benchmark Checklist[/caption] Benchmarking the user experience of a website, app, or product is essential to understanding how the experience is for your users and if you're making effective changes to the interface over time. A UX benchmark is similar to going to the doctor to get your blood pressure, weight, and cholesterol checked. You get a series of quantitative measures